Harrison Woods is a 17-year-old girl attending Arbor Coast High, a boarding school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her dark past including her rocky relationship with her parents and her esteemed older brother's suicide are the reasons she landed herself at...
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I had been nervous to drive to the apartment. Nervous to meet Harrison there. She wasn't supposed to know about the apartment in the first place, but Jason explained it to me, and I tried to keep my temper at ease while he did.
"Don't flip out, man," Jason warned before telling me about how Harrison found out about the apartment. He was hesitant. "I took her there once you disappeared because I thought you might be there, but you weren't. She was just looking around."
I sucked in a deep breath. Calm, Otto, calm. "So what? Did she find anything?"
Jason looked down, fidgeting with his fingers, and I had never seen him act this way before. He was acting so unnerved as if he was scared himself. Scared of what? He took a moment before he looked back up at me.
"She just found a lot of things in the place," he started, "and there was only 16 of everything there. Literally everything. And the thermostat was at 16, too. And she found this note, one that you wrote to Jolene, I think. Mentioned meeting up at 16th street."
Jolene. My jaw tensed and I knew Jason could see that, causing him to stop talking. "What are you trying to say?" I asked, attempting to keep my tone calm, but it proved to be difficult. There was a ball of anger threatening to crawl up from the pit of my stomach.
"I'm not trying to say anything," He defended. "I'm just pointing out the fact that Harrison found out that there was a lot to do with the number 16 in the apartment. Apartment number 16. You can't blame her for thinking that's a little weird."
"Do you think it's a little weird?" I questioned him callously.
"I know how much you liked Jolene and that apartment must mean a lot to you since she moved away, but... With all of the 16's, don't you think that's just a little creepy? A little too weird to be purely coincidental? And, I mean, the shoes. The only shoes you had in there were 8 pairs of sandals, and I haven't seen you wear those things since she moved," He said and I couldn't take it anymore.
I snapped. "There is nothing fucking wrong with it, and the whole 16 bullshit is just a fucking coincidence, so fuck off, Jason!" I yelled, stepping closer to him.
"Otto"
"Don't even think about speaking her name again," I warned. "And keep your nose in your own goddamn business next time! I am going to meet up with Harrison, so you can go fuck yourself."
Jason stepped towards me once before saying, "You cannot go there like this, Otto. Not with your temper, you need to calm down. You have to trust me on this, man."
"You can't make me do anything, Jason," I said, taking a step back and swiping my keys from the counter. "I'm leaving and I'm telling you that it will be fine. So you decide whether you trust me or not."
He was thinking, and he looked down and shook his head. Jason lifted his head up to look at me, and it was almost as if he was about to cry from the sparkle in his eyes, but he wasn't going to be vulnerable towards me. He never was. Sucking in a deep breath, Jason said, "I trust you, Otto. It's the other you I don't trust. So as long as he isn't the one gracing Harrison with his presence today, then go on ahead."
